The purpose of this core is to provide service to the subprojects in the preparation of protein reagents. Most of the work will be conducted in the Muscle Biology Laboratory which has approximately 2000 square feet, including a walk-in cold room, that can be devoted to core activities. In addition this laboratory has a full abattoir at the other end of the building where tissue from large animals (bovine, pig, sheep) can be obtained immediately post-mortem. Protein purification is time consuming and requires a variety of expensive equipment (centrifuges, spectrophotometers, chromatography columns, HPLC, fraction collectors, etc.) that are hard to justify if protein purification needs are sporadic. In addition a number of proteins will be used by several projects concurrently, so sharing of these reagents leads to overall improvement in experimental efficiency. The core director has many years of hands-on experience in protein purification and antibody production and thus can capably direct the core effort.